Cardus on The Oval
John Hall
book on the 1946 Indian tour, in which Arlott was rather disparaging
about The Oval, I felt I should redress the balance. Here is an extract
from Neville Cardus's 1957 book "Close of Play", part of the chapter
entitled "Surrey Cricket":
...I have heard hard things said about Kennington Oval by members in the
Long Room at Lord's, but no cricket ground anywhere has seen greater
cricket and greater cricketers summer after summer than the Oval has
seen through the ages. Lord's has its cosmopolitan amenities, opulence
and spaciousness; the Oval is London and to some extent genuine Cockney.
The crowd is more of a piece than the floating population at Lord's
where any afternoon a man might look in just back from Rangoon or Kuala
Lumpur. At the Oval there is a genuine partisanship and the players seem
to get into touch with the spectators more than is easily possible at
Lord's, where one day a Test match is on view, the next Middlesex v.
Somersetshire, the next Eton v. Harrow, the next Army v. Navy; Lord's is
constantly reflecting a changing social as well as cricket scene, but at
the Oval character, fashion and clothes, and the women, remain much the
same the more they are, if ever, changed.
Recently the Oval has had its face lifted; the dusty deposits of time
have been tidied. But nothing of the modern art of rejuvenation can make
the Oval toe the line with a spick and span contemporary blankness of
countenance. The place is wrinkled with history. It is still presided
over by the Senior and Junior gasometers. The old ghosts, shades of
Sharpe, Bowley and Beaumont, of Key and the Reads, of all the Surrey
dead and departed, can be seen at the Oval to this day, vanishing at the
end of a summer afternoon in the smoky gleams of Waterloo and Vauxhall.
In recent years, too, the boundary has been shortened at the Oval by
boards placed within the historic expanse. Once on a time it was easy to
run five for one of Tom Hayward's drives to the Vauxhall end of the
ground.
[Some nine pages of reminiscinces of Surrey cricketers reluctantly
snipped.]
...The Oval is not a handsome place to look at if only the physical eye
sees it. There is another way of looking at it.
[End quote]
--
If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?
Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)
John Hall
writes
>In article <SAeF3TA3$jkw...@jhall.demon.co.uk> John Hall
>> Having read with enjoyment Ramaswamy's latest excerpt from John Arlott's
>> book on the 1946 Indian tour, in which Arlott was rather disparaging
>> about The Oval, I felt I should redress the balance. Here is an extract
>> from Neville Cardus's 1957 book "Close of Play", part of the chapter
>> entitled "Surrey Cricket":
>
>Sorry, John! I'd planned to add a prologue, but forgot in my hurry
>to address Amitabha's eagerness to hear about Banerjee.
>
>Never did sample the lemonade at the Oval, the beer was plentiful, and
>they do stock cricket books in the bookstall, so things have improved!
>They even have picture postcards of the Bedser twins (who look not
>at all like twins),
Interesting, since there are lots of anecdotes about people being unable
to tell them apart. Perhaps the pictures were taken a number of years
apart.
> but nothing about the famous catch by Hutton.
>
>Cheers,
>Ramaswamy
>
>PS: I wonder if that'll flush out the missing person!
Yes, surely he can't *still* be on his trip?
--
John